Increasing number of people suffering from lung cancer shows there is need for more concerted efforts on improved levels of smoking cessation. 

Lung cancer is divided into various types namely; small cell lung cancer divided into limited and extensive disease, non-small cell lung cancer that is also divided into squamous and adenocarcinoma diseases, typical and atypical carcinoids, and large cell neuro-endocrine carcinoma.   

The most aggressive forms of the disease mentioned above are caused by smoking and especially develop in long time smokers. 

For months, I have been in close contact with lung cancer patients and have met hundreds of them. The majority of the patients tell me that they use smoking to relieve their stress levels. 

Some reveal with a sincere heart that the only pleasure they have in life is take at least two packs of cigarettes per day, and that smoking is the only thing that relieves them from depression. 

The majority of smokers start smoking at an adolescent age or adult youth stage and by the time you reach 50’s or 60’s you have accumulated millions of carcinogens large enough to crush down your lung chambers.

Two packs of cigarettes daily and smoking for 30 years makes 60 pack-yards in life, arguably high enough for intolerable level of intoxication. 

But even if many people believe smoking relieves their stress, successful quit or recovery from smoking leads to lower stress levels, lower risk of anxiety and depression. 

In this situation, you improve quality and quantity of your life. The benefits of this outcome need a good level of cessation or counseling to all people and specifically to active smokers.

In our daily practice, we usually do active and regular smoking cessation procedures to help patients with lung cancer and families to stop cigarette smoking and any other replacement in the due course of their lives.

Massive lung cancer quitting cessation is organised in many of modern health facilities to sensitise people from dangers of smoking as a major health hazard. There is proven evidence that smoking cessation can help people to quit smoking successfully. 

Healthcare professionals work with people or smokers to set a quit date of smoking and avoid triggers that sabotage people to abandon the behavior.  

Lung cancer risk in smokers can be significantly diminished in a time-dependent manner following smoking cessation. 

There is proven evidence that relative risk of lung cancer in former smokers compared with never-smokers is about 16 times reduction for the first five years of abstinence, eight times for the next five years, and gradually declines to two times during the next 30 years.

More recent studies confirm that cessation of smoking in middle life reduces risk of subsequent lung cancer. 

Whereas the link between tobacco and lung cancer risk is well established for people who actively smoke, the relationship between environmental tobacco smoke exposure (passive smoking) and lung cancer risk in nonsmokers appears more controversial.

Individuals exposed to passive smoke inhale tobacco carcinogens at levels significantly lower than active smokers. 

Incontrovertible evidence that link cigarette smoking with lung cancer and the devastating social and economic impact of tobacco abuse has prompted many countries to initiate programs that decrease tobacco addiction. 

Some of the efforts include legislation that regulate tobacco components, increase taxes on cigarettes, ban tobacco advertisements and smoking in public places as well as development of smoking cessation clinics.

Important to mention is that there is also a minor genetic predisposition to development of lung cancer as observed with nonsmoking family members who develop lung cancer at an early age, and in families with multiple afflicted members. 

However, the genes conferring susceptibility to this disease have not been fully elucidated presently.  

Dr Joseph Kamugisha is a resident oncologist in Jerusalem, Israel